Writing advice – straight from the horse’s mouth

bySimononFebruary 24, 2010

Writing advice is everywhere on the internet. There’s way too much to link to on a regular basis without getting overwhelmed. But today there’s a great article on writing advice from a range of writers, mostly novelists, on the website of the UK newspaper The Guardian. It’s well worth checking out.

These are not archive tips from long-dead writers. It looks like they’ve contacted all these writers in person and asked for their thoughts. There are plenty of famous names in there too, although inevitably a little UK-centric. There’s plenty of timeless writing advice here though.

The writers have been asked to give their top ten tips for writers. (Hey, that sounds a bit like a Digg-bait blog post, doesn’t it? Maybe newspapers are finally ‘getting it‘.)

One of my favourites is from Philip Pullman, who only gives one tip:

My main rule is to say no to things like this, which tempt me away from my proper work.

Michael Moorcock is in there too:

Find an author you admire (mine was Conrad) and copy their plots and characters in order to tell your own story, just as people learn to draw and paint by copying the masters.

Jeanette Winterson says:

Turn up for work. Discipline allows creative freedom. No discipline equals no freedom.

If you have the time, and fancy a chuckle, go check it out. It’s a keeper.

Comments on this entry are closed.

BeginnerFebruary 28, 2010, 9:48 pm

I have a lot of ideas to write about whizzing around my brain, my question is how do I use these to write orignal blog posts, as I always struggle with this. Actually a post on this would be awesome. Problem is I seem to use a written pieces but change the words around, does this make sense, so in effect it’s not really my work. Does research have to come into this? If so where and when?

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